


Two Months

by NightOwl14



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Minor Character Death, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-18 18:15:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 5,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7325449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightOwl14/pseuds/NightOwl14
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a violent breakdown in the wake of his son's death, Mr. Gold is mandated to attend therapy sessions. He expects to hate them--is determined to hate them--but he soon finds his doctor is nothing like he thought she would be. And through his time with her, he might finally manage to put the past behind him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The First Session (Pt. 1)

The waiting room is cozier than that of your average doctor’s office. Warm lamplight casts a flickering glow across the beige wallpaper and plush lavender chairs. A pot of Verbenas resides on a gleaming, mahogany table and the draft from the air conditioner makes their petals flutter, as though they are waving hello.

If he didn’t know better, Mr. Gold might mistake his surroundings for a lounge.

But he _does_ know better. He can’t help how keenly aware he is of the fact that he’s in a waiting room. And he’s more frightened than he ought to be of what he’s waiting for.

The instant the clock hands proclaim that it’s time for his appointment, a girl in a deep blue skirt enters the room. Her head is titled downward. Eyes on the clipboard she carries. Curling strands of chestnut hair hang in front of her face. She can’t be the doctor. She’s much too…well, she just _can’t_ be. The more Gold looks at her—the upward quirk of her lips, the rosy blush of her cheeks—the more certain he is that the girl who’s just come into the waiting room is nothing more than a secretary.

Belatedly, he wishes he’d asked Regina what the therapist looked like. But at the time, he’d been so resentful that to request any nonessential information had seemed like some sort of consent.

“Mr. Gold?” The girl calls out, finally lifting her gaze from the clipboard. She has an accent. Thick. Australian. Her eyes are a lucent shade of blue and they immediately land on him, as he’s the only person in the room. She smiles at him. Crinkles adorn her eyes and mouth, allowing the expression to appear earnest. She seems like she smiles often, this girl. She seems like the sort who would grin at a dog passing by on the street, or a shower of snowflakes blanketing the ground. And Gold means to find it annoying—he means to find everything about this experience irritating and inane—but there’s something very hard to hate about that smile. It doesn’t come off as contrived or performed. Instead it’s as though this girl has a lot of experience looking at people and spotting their very best parts, and the best part of you is so radiant that she can’t help but beam when she sees it. Gold almost catches himself returning the expression. “Right this way.” The girl gestures to the door through which she just came.

Mr. Gold rises from his seat, leaning heavily on his cane, before following her into a place much like the one he just left. Two chairs sit opposite each other in the center of the room. Paintings of quaint neighborhoods embellish the walls. Gold must admit, with the low lighting and shelves full of books, it’s more inviting than he’d imagined.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Gold.” It’s irrational, but her accent makes him feel a little better, makes the Scottish lilt of his own voice seem a little less out of place. The girl takes a seat in the larger of the two chairs, crossing her legs and tucking errant strands of hair behind her ears. “I’m Dr. French, but you can-”

“You’re my shrink?” Gold’s eyes widen as he drags a hand across his stubble-ridden chin. “I don’t mean to be rude, it’s just, are you even old enough to drink?”

She’s flustered by the question, but quickly regains her composure and responds with aplomb. “I’m older than I look. Old enough to drink, and drive—though not at the same time, of course. Old enough vote and watch R-rated movies and,” she leans forward, cupping a hand around her mouth and dropping her voice to a whisper, as though she’s sharing some precious secret, “I’m even old enough to be a therapist.” Settling back into her seat, she finishes, “You can call me Belle.”

“Mr. Gold,” is his gruff response. If Belle is surprised that he doesn’t offer to be called by his first name, she doesn’t show it.

“Take a seat, Mr. Gold.” And he does.

His shrink’s eyes move like elevators. He can feel her cataloging his stiff posture and tight grip on his cane. “Is there anything you’d like me to know about you, before we start?”

“Just that I’m here under protest,” Gold replies, tapping the heel of his dress shoe on the leg of his chair.

He expects her to ignore the comment. Or perhaps she’ll relay to him the many merits of therapy, how helpful all this will be with the grieving process. She might even come back with a witty retort. But she doesn’t. Instead, she tells him, “I know. And I’m sorry for your loss. They said the fire started in the bedroom, is that true?”

Gold flinches. He loses his grip on his cane and it topples to the ground. Of course, she knows. Regina probably divulged every sordid detail of that night. Still, he’d expected the girl to tiptoe around it, the way all of his colleagues did after they spouted some perfunctory condolence. He hadn’t expected her to hurl the memory at him within the first two minutes of the session.

Gold squeezes his eyes shut.


	2. 11/11/15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In case it isn't clear, this chapter is a flashback.

He’d thought the smoke was coming from fireworks. Stupid. Exceptionally stupid. The kind of stupid that preys on distracted minds, seeping into the crevices of a brain so that every single thought circles back to whatever trivial matter with which you’re preoccupied.

It was Veteran’s Day. Fireworks had made sense. Gold’s neighbors sometimes set them off on holidays. They would surge into the sky, bloom like flowers, and then sizzle away, leaving a swirling puff of smoke in their wake.

But not _that_ much smoke. Not the undulating river of grey Gold spotted flowing upwards into the starry night. And he would’ve realized that, if he hadn’t been so goddamn distracted.

He and Milah had been fighting.

Halfway through the date they’d been on, his wife had mentioned a job opening as a teller at a local bank. “We’ve been over this,” he’d sighed, “Milah, I like my job. I like the company.”

“I know you do. But what you _like_ has to come second to what’s best for your family.” The right side of his wife’s upper lip had curled up in disdain. It’s an expression with which he was familiar and it grated on his nerves. He’d been in love with her once. In love with the way the wind caught her black hair and the way her body curved when she placed a hand on her hip. He remembered being in love with her. He just couldn’t remember why.

“What’s wrong with being a salesman?”

“Commissions aren’t a stable income. Our son is going to start looking at colleges in less than five years. We need to start saving.”

“You mean _I_ need to start saving. God forbid you worked a day in your life.”

It was a tired argument that neither side ever won.

The drive home was silent except for the static-laden voice of a weather forecaster pouring through the radio. Their fight echoed in Gold’s head. And when he pulled onto their road, noticing the stream of smoke, he’d assumed it was just remnants of fireworks. A celebration.

Desolation would’ve been a better word, he realized as the car neared his home.

The flashing red and blue lights. The blazing orange. His wife’s nails digging into his arm as she started to cry. Maybe she already knew. Even before they pulled into the driveway, before Gold leapt from the car and dashed toward the moiling cluster of firefights and policemen, before the blonde sheriff told him, as kindly as she could, that his son had perished in the fire, maybe Milah already knew. Mothers can sense that sort of thing sometimes.

Gold never got the chance to ask her. Less than two weeks after the death of their son, Milah filed for divorce, packed what meager belongings she had left, and moved to a town on the other side of the state. He only knows her address because of the monthly alimony checks that he sends.

He‘d like to hate her, but he can’t. The hatred he feels for himself leaves him no energy to direct his anger elsewhere.

His son had been on the house’s second floor, watching television, when the fire began. By the time the first tufts of smoke crept under his bedroom door, the flames had begun to devour the staircase. He couldn’t get the window open in time to jump. They’d always had trouble getting that window open. It was on the to-do list, between fixing the lock on the back door and giving the garage a new coat of paint.

It was a cigarette. One cigarette. Placed precariously on the edge of the ashtray. It had tipped out, igniting the pile of papers on which it landed, which in turn ignited the nightstand on which the pile rested.

One. Tiny. Barley-lit. Cigarette.

 _Gold’s_ cigarette.


	3. The First Session (Pt. 2)

“Does it matter,” Gold finally sputters, “where the goddam thing started?”

“No,” admits Belle, tilting her head the way a bird might, “what matters is that you can’t even talk about the logistics of what happened, let alone its emotional impact on you. I just wanted to gauge how you were dealing with the trauma.”

“Doesn’t that strike you as manipulative?” he spits.

“That’s what therapists are: professional manipulators. I just prefer to be up front about it.”

“And you think that it’s a good a thing? Something you should be proud of?”

He expects a scathing retort, but he should really know better than to expect anything of the girl sitting across from him. Gold prides himself on his ability to read people, but he’s never met anybody less predictable. The notion provides a strange sort of exhilaration. Like for the first time in what feels like forever, he’s reading a story that surprises him at every turn.

Belle’s tone is consoling, “I think it helps people. I think it could help you, if you’d let it.”

“Doubtful.”

“You never know. And since you’re stuck with me for the next two months, why not give it an honest try?”

She has a point. He doesn’t like that she has a point.

Gold’s eyes traverse the room as he remains stubbornly silent. There’s no clock on any of the walls. Likely intentional. Definitely irritating. He scratches the back of his neck. “Have you actually read any of those books?” he asks, motioning to the row of shelves.

“Some of them,” she replies.

“They look like encyclopedias.”

“And?”

“I didn’t actually know anyone actually _read_ encyclopedias.” Gold catches the pursing of Belle’s lips. She doesn’t appreciate this deviation from the subject at hand. He watches her delicate hands fiddle with the hem of her skirt as gears tick behind her eyes.

“Well, I don’t imagine salesmen have much use for encyclopedias, but doctors-”

“Are shrinks considered doctors?” he mocks, picking lint of the shoulder of his suit.

“Are salesmen who can’t sell anything still considered salesmen?” she asks with that same tilt of her head. Gold blanches. To say he couldn’t sell anything would be hyperbolic, but he while he always managed to meet his company’s quotas, it was never enough to make Milah happy. It wouldn’t have been enough to pay for his son’s education, not that it’s of any consequence now. “I can be mean too,” Belle warns, “But I don’t want to be. I don’t _like_ to be. It isn’t who I am. And I don’t think it’s who you are either. Am I wrong?”

Maybe. He can think of no caustic response that wouldn’t make him feel awful after saying it. He’s not being fair. His boss is the one forcing him to attend these sessions; he should direct his anger at Regina, not Belle.

If there was a clock in the room, it would’ve ticked several times before Gold managed to answer. The last rays of sunlight are peaking through the slivers of the window that aren’t covered by curtains when he finally whispers, with utter sincerity, “I hope not.”

Belle leans forward. Her hand lands on his knee, fingers spreading out like the wings of a bird. She squeezes gently before reclining back in her seat. “Me too.”


	4. The Third Session

“Do you like your job?” Belle asks as she traces the grooves in her chair with her fingernails.

            It is their third session

“I like it enough to come here in order to keep it.” These past few months, Gold has worked more hours than ever before. Making calls. Knocking on doors, despite the frigid weather that December has bestowed upon the town. If he has downtime, he will think. If he thinks, it will be of his son. And the crescent shaped marks Milah’s fingernails left in his arm. And how brilliantly the fire blazed as it licked the cobalt sky. And how much it has to hurt to feel it sear your skin and char your flesh.

“Hey!” Belle knocks his shin with the tip of her shoe. “You come here because I’m good company and you know it.”

“I come here because I’m a masochist. _And_ because of my job.”

“Can you tell me about what happened?” Her jovial manner has been replaced with solemnity. He wants to say no. Wants to tell her to fuck off. But he also wants, for some reason beyond his understanding, to prove her right. To prove that the animosity he projects is a façade, and underneath is a man who didn’t deserve for his son to die. Didn’t deserve for his wife to leave. Doesn’t deserve to blame himself.

He’d like to be that man, if only to the girl sitting in front of him.

Somewhere underneath the blanket of emotion resides the logic that this is a tactic. Belle has told him she believes he’s a good person so that he’ll try to be a good person. It doesn’t take a masters degree in psychology to understand that. But he wants to believe so badly that someone thinks all these horrible things happened _to_ him, not _because_ of him. He wants to believe it so badly that he does.

Just like he wanted to believe he was happy in his marriage so badly that he did.

“Eventually,” he tells her. “But not yet.”


	5. The Fifth Session

By their fifth session, Gold has stopped wearing suits. He dons a white button down with the sleeves rolled up and a deep blue pair of jeans. Belle remarks that she didn’t think he owned a pair of jeans. She thought his closet held nothing but suits. He points out that she never wears anything other than utterly impractical heels.

The next time they meet, she’s in white tennis sneakers. They are mud-splattered and frayed. She wears them with her usual tights and skirt attire.

He laughs when he sees her. And then realizes how long it’s been since he last found anything funny.


	6. The Eighth Session

“I think you’re starting to like me, Mr. Gold.”

“I think you have a very large ego, Dr. French.”


	7. 11/24/15

Christmas is a dull affair. One of Gold’s colleagues invited him to a party, but the man’s expression was so burdened with pity that to accept would’ve dealt a knock-out blow to the last shreds of pride Gold has left.

He sits in his apartment, still in his pajamas, and watches Christmas movies on his laptop. He never got around to really furnishing the place. The funeral drained most of his savings and the motivation to buy things like televisions simply never arrived.

At around eleven he heads down to the mailroom, simply because there is nothing else to be done. He expects the bills and the notices from his divorce attorney. But one letter surprises him. It’s lavender. His name and address are scrawled across the front in perfect script.

He opens it with a knife instead of just tearing. Inside is a photo of Belle with a man who must be her father. He has her eyes. And that same hard-to-hate smile. They’re posing in front of a Christmas tree, complete with tinsel and an angel on top. Swirling white letters beneath the photo proclaim “Happy Holidays.”

She probably sends them to all of her patients. She definitely does.

Still, some ineffable warmth swells inside of him. And he notices—irrelevantly, of course—that the photo of the French family includes no boyfriend.


	8. The Twelfth Session (Pt. 1)

“Are you upset about the divorce? Did you want to stay married?” Gone are the easy questions of Gold’s work and the car accident that resulted in his need for a cane. They are more than a month into their sessions, and now questions about his marriage are fair game. Soon, questions about the fire will be as well. He doesn’t know if he’s ready for that.

            “We wouldn’t ever be able to make each other happy again,” he replies. “We weren’t even making each other happy beforehand. I’m upset but…nowhere near as upset as I should be.”

“There’s no amount of upset you _should_ be,” Belle insists, her brow creasing. “If you’re not sad, there’s a reason for it. A valid reason. It isn’t because there’s something wrong with you. Try again.”

Gold sighs, knocking his heel against the leg of his chair. “Milah was…in love with the man I was when I was eighteen. Ambitious. Confident to the point of arrogance. But people change in a decade. Let alone in three. Not everything ends up the way you planned it. I was okay with that. She wasn’t.”

Belle takes a sip of her water, making it even harder to read her expression than usual. “Do you resent her, for running away?”

“No.” Much of what he feels is a vague amorphous blur in his mind. Tiny effervescent wisps of emotions flash, and then fade. But he’s certain he doesn’t resent his ex-wife.

“Why not?”

“It wouldn’t be fair. I’m running too. Just in a different way.”

“What do you mean?”


	9. 11/27/15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Again, this one is a flashback.

Gold wouldn’t have gone to the company dinner, except that Regina had insisted, citing that it would be good for him. Regina has a lot of opinions about what is and is not good for him. The party wasn’t agonizing but Gold had never been very sociable, and he spent much of the meal sipping Vodka tonics quietly in the corner.

Anything was better than thinking. Thinking was heat and smoke and siren wails. Thinking was a shiny coffin on a cold morning and a dead boy wearing a suit for the first time since his piano recital in third grade. Anything was better. Anything.

Sometime between the main course and dessert a man with jet-black hair and eyes that rival Belle’s in their sheer blueness sat down next to him and patted his back. “I heard about the divorce, mate,” Mr. Jones said with an exaggerated frown.

Out of the corner of his eye, Gold could see Jones’ buddies watching from the next table. Wide-eyed. Elbowing each other and murmuring.

“He won’t go through with it. Watch, he won’t,” one whispered.

“Shut the fuck up,” another chastised.

Jones squeezed Gold’s shoulder a little too hard. “How’s Mila holdin’ up?” Gold didn’t respond, just sipped his drink and tightened his grip on his cane. “Cause I heard she’s opening her legs to any man who so much as looks her way—then again, I heard she did the same while you two were married—and I was wondering if I could get her phone number?”

Jones grinned at the end. White teeth flashing. It was his teeth that pushed Gold over the edge, he has no idea why, but something about Jones’ teeth made him want to slam his fist into the man’s mouth. Instead he used his cane.

First whack.

Jones fell off the chair. He spat blood onto the polished wooden floor. “What the hell! It was a fucking joke. One of my mates dared me to ask. Have a sense of humor. Jesus.”

Second whack.          

There was a loud crack. Jones lay vertically on the ground. He was spewing bloody saliva. His hands wrapped around his neck and he started gasping, as though something was caught in his throat. It was probably a tooth. Gold hoped to god it was a tooth.

Third whack.

People were screaming. Someone shouted, “Call the police.”

Forth whack.

Men grabbed Gold’s arms. Tugged him backwards. Squeezed his wrist until he dropped the cane. When the police arrived, he was cuffed. Spent the night in jail. In the morning, Regina picked him up in her shiny black car with seat-warmers and a built in GPS.

As she drove him back to his apartment, he waited for her to tell him that he’d lost his job. That the last little thing he had left was squandered along with everything else he’d ever given damn about.

Instead, she told him that Jones wouldn’t be pressing charges. Then she told him how _lucky_ he was that Jones wouldn’t be pressing charges. “You’re taking a two-month leave. Bereavement. I’ve already filed the paper work, it’s all said and done. You’ll be able to come back in two months, so long as you take the necessary steps.”

The necessary steps being bi-weekly therapy sessions over the course of his two-month sabbatical. He wanted to protest, but he thought if he opened his mouth for any reason at all he’d start to sob.

When she pulled up to his apartment complex, Regina handed him a tiny white card and told him to get better. As though he was sick. As though the loss of a child can be cured like the flu or a nasty cough.

He threw the card in the trashcan when he got inside.

Then he took a shower.

Then he cried.

Then he dug the card back out, called the number on it and scheduled an appointment. Because he was certain that if he lost one more goddamn thing, he was going to shatter.


	10. The Twelfth Session (Pt. 2)

Gold runs his fingers through his chin-length hair. “It wasn’t even _what_ he said but…that he _would_ say it, to someone who’d just lost everything.”

“I don’t…” Belle swallows. “I don’t condone violence, of course. But I…. What you did, doesn’t make you awful, Mr. Gold. _It_ was awful. But not you.”

He wishes, not for the first time, that he could read her better. Because if she believes that, and he thinks she might, then maybe his son could believe it too, wherever he is.


	11. 2/1/16

February brings with it the coldest weather their town has seen in years. Clumpy white snowflakes descend up on the streets and the rooftops as Gold readies himself for bed. He’s just finished brushing his teeth when his phone rings.

Unknown number, the robotic voice proclaims, as Gold brings the device to his ear and slides his thumb across the screen to answer the call. It takes him several tries. “Technologically inept,” he believes, is the phrase for people like him.

“Hello?” he asks.

“Hello.” He drops his toothbrush. It clatters on the tiles that line the bathroom floor. “Don’t, don’t say anything, okay?” the voice pleads, “I just needed to tell you something. Not _wanted_ to. Please know that. I don’t want to say what I’m about to. But if I don’t, I’m going to burst open, I can tell. And this will make me feel better, and I deserve to feel better, don’t you think?” Her inhale and audible and tremulous. “I…. I loved him. We haven’t loved each other for such a long time, but I swear to you I always loved him, even if I didn’t always show it as well as I should’ve. And I can’t, I can’t ever forgive you for killing him. And I’m not telling you that to hurt you. But I need you to understand that I didn’t leave because I was selfish, I left because every time I look I want to hurt you. It just boils inside of me. I want to hit you and shake you and demand to know why. Except there isn’t a why and I just…I needed to say that. And I’m sorry.”

“Milah?” he breathes and the dial tone bleeps in his ear.


	12. The Seventeenth Session

“Are you okay?” Belle asks, as she looks him up and down. His position on the edge of his seat. The drumming of his fingertips. He feels like a coiled spring. “Mr. Gold?”

            “Just,” he puts a hand up, silencing her, “not today, okay.”

A pause. “Okay.”

He knows she’s only saying it because of the tick in his jaw. The shaking of his leg. She can tell that he is bursting with the sort of pain that renders one incapable of passivity.

As predicted, his silence is fleeting.

“Doesn't it just engulf you sometimes? Drown you?” His words, much like his body, quiver ever so slightly. The same way Milah’s words quivered when she told him he’d killed his son. “How awful the world is. Don't you ever get that feeling that suffocating, gnawing dread that you can shove behind heaps of work that you have to do and people you have to see and episodes of _Jersey Shore_ you have to watch, but you can't ever really shut it off.” He appears to be on the verge of leaping out his chair and doing…well, there isn’t anything to be done.

“A teacher in Montana died yesterday, after pushing her students out of the way of a school bus. And this girl in Indiana—this fucking eight-year-old girl—died from lung cancer just last week. And there are whole television shows devoted to animal abuse. And-”

“Mr. Gold.”

“What?”

“What’s happened?”

“My wife, ex-wife…it’s not important?”

“Did you speak to her?”

“I told you it’s not-”

“Did she say something that upset you?”

“She told me I killed my son.”

Belle purses her lips, clearly doesn’t want to ask. Probably already knows the answer thanks to Regina. But the words slip out nevertheless. Each syllable like a step over a frozen pond, as though with one wrong word the ground will splinter open and swallow her up. “What did she mean?”

“The cigarette. My goddamn cigarette. Are you happy? Almost two-months in and you’ve finally gotten me to admit it. I killed him. And I’m not the only one who blames me. But it's not just that. It's everything. This whole fucking world and all the shit in it: the rapists and the murderers, the diseases that kill kids and the monsters who butcher their dogs. Car accidents and house fires. Wars and mental illness. All the awful, mortifying, commonplace, everyday, ubiquitous shit.

“And even worse are the good things. My son and you and hopscotch and golden retrievers and its just awful— _god awful_ —that...” He sucks in a breath. “It had to hurt, when he died—of course it did—I’ll bet it was agony to feel his flesh burn. I'll bet that teacher felt the bus crushing her bones. I’ll bet that girl with cancer felt like her lungs were bleeding every time she took a breath. And it always seems—without fail—it seems like the people who get hurt the worst are the ones who deserve it the least. And doesn't that ever just fucking drown you?”

They’re both crying. He wants to reach out and wipe the tears from her eyes. But he can’t. He wants to know how soft her hair is, and how her eyes catch the light of a sunrise. But he can’t. Because she’s young and vibrant and he’s old and broken. She’s gentle and affable and he’s jaded and apathetic. She’s a doctor and he’s a salesman. She’s beautiful and he’s…inadequate.

So he does the only other thing he can do. He leaves. Five minutes into their appointment and he walks right out the door.


	13. 2/3/16 - 2/10/16

He calls in sick to the next session. And the one after that. He does so after hours, to ensure he gets the voicemail.

If Belle tells Regina he’s not holding up his end of the bargain, so be it.


	14. 2/12/16

He never quite loses the desire to touch her—run his fingertips over her skin or tuck an errant strand of hair behind her ear—much in the way one never really outgrows the urge to finger-paint on frosty windows.


	15. The Last Session

Their last appointment, Gold realizes with a humorless laugh, is on Valentine’s Day. With the exception of sentimentality, first times and last times hold no more value than all the times in between. He is not sentimental.

He tells himself this so that he feels justified in not going.

He tells himself this until thirty minutes before the appointment; when he comes to the sudden realization that the pain and embarrassment which will inevitably accompany what he’s about to do, will be nothing compared to ever present ache of not knowing.

            On his way out of the building he spots a rose taped to the outside of someone’s apartment door. A tiny white card is attached to its stem. Likely a sweet Valentine’s Day surprise for one of his neighbors left by a boyfriend or husband. He decides he needs it more than they do and yanks off the tape.

            Gold is thirteen minutes late when he stumbles into the waiting room with his makeshift flower and wrinkled suit. Nothing in the room has changed, but it feels like an entirely different place than where he sat two months ago; dreading his first appointment and cursing his boss for forcing him to go.

He shoves open the door to the office only to find Belle seated in her usual chair, hunched over one of those goddamn encyclopedias. She’s tracing the lines of writing with her index finger as she reads.

Gold laughs. Belle looks up at him with a crease in her brow. Surprise is etched into her pretty features. “I didn’t think I was going to see you again. It’s been over a week.” Her lips part as though she has more to say, then her eyes snag on the rose in his hand.

Gold sucks in a deep breath.

Here goes nothing:

“You should say no,” he blurts out. Off to a killer start already. “When I ask you—at the end of what I’m about to say, I’m going to ask you something—you should say no.

“Because I have no idea how to be in a functional relationship and I have no idea if you’d even want one with me. But I know that you’re the reason I’ve gotten up in the morning for the past two months and I know that the only time since my son died when I’ve actually been trying to _feel_ emotions instead of avoid them is when I’m in this room, sitting across from you. And I know that if you said yes, I’d be getting the better end of the deal by a mile, but I also know that I would do everything I could to make that up to you.”

And so I thought, I’d ask. Just in case you said yes.” He leans down and places the rose horizontally across the book on Belle’s lap. She hesitates from a moment before picking it up and twirling it with her fingertips. “Belle French, would you-” Gold breaks off when he notices that Belle has started to read what’s on the little white card. “Oh no, don’t do that.”

“‘Dear Ruby, you have my heart,’” Belle reads aloud. Then she asks, “Who is Ruby?”

Shit. “My neighbor, I suppose. It was her flower first. This was all a bit last minute. I’m sorry.” Awkwardness hangs heavy in the air and Gold is starting to thinks he’s made a terrible mistake. “I’m going to go now, actually. There’s just no way this can go well after-”

“Don’t,” Belle says suddenly, “Don’t go, I just….” She looks down at the rose. “You’ll need a new therapist,” she mutters absently, “It wouldn’t be ethical.” Then she reaches up, wraps her arm around his neck, and pulls him down into a kiss. Her lips are soft and coated in cherry-flavored gloss. When she pulls away, she smiles. _That goddamn smile._

He smiles back.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read this. It's my first Rumbelle fic and if you could take the time to share any thoughts you have on it, it would be much appreciated. <3


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